Thursday, September 27, 2012

I recently stumbled across this problem with one of Pentaho's applications. When the application was downloaded and installed on a Mac, launching the .app file resulted in "This app is damaged and can't be opened. Move to the trash".

Relatively quickly with a few searches, we figure out that GateKeeper was the messenger, but why was she being so harsh? Our apps are unsigned (a signature improvement slated for the next release), but damaged? I was offended.

As it turns out, Apple has a decent support article that explains why you might get a "damaged..." message versus GateKeeper's standard message warning the user that the application is unsigned.

The answer to softening GateKeeper's tone (AKA getting her to only prompt with a security message rather than a "damaged" message) lies within the info.plist file within the .app. Kurtis, our .app builder, found that if he sets the following values, then the .app reverts to being a harmless unsigned .app.

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That just shows how ridiculous retarded that fruit company can be. I love their hardware, but on a software side they suck big time. Even Microsoft has not such a strong 'vendor lock-in' mindset as Apple has.

This is the node that we needed to modify, but there are other attributes in the info.plist file that relate to whether an .app is signed or unsigned. If you look at mac's Code Signing Guide, under the section "Code Signing Tasks", you have a set of attributes to examine as possible causes of the problem.

As mentioned above. Adjust your security and privacy settings in System Preferences. Then run the data integration launcher. After you have run it once you can change you security settings back to Mac app store and other identified developers. It should work just fine after that but you will need to do that again if you download a new update.

About Me

I have been in the Big Data, Business Analytics and Java development space for twenty years. I started out as a data warehouse developer for a small insurance company in the Midwest, worked for Hyperion Solutions as a software engineer for a number of years, and came in on the ground floor with the guys at Pentaho. I have a history of moving around, so I have enjoyed working with the community, consulting directly with Pentaho customers and partners and coding with the development team. I am now an Enterprise Architect and consultant for Pentaho, working on various projects.